I turned and looked at him, wondering what he meant. He was smiling. “She has a keen mind,” he said, “but her heart wanders.”
My mouth dropped and I was stunned. “That can only be one person, Captain. A man named PoPo told me the same thing about her.”
“And me, monsieur. I knew him well. It was I who wrote the letter informing her that he was dying.”
“Knew?”
“Oui. He passed on not long after she returned.”
I remembered the day she read that letter. We were deep in the Sahara in a desolate crossroads called In Salah. It was where we said good-bye. “You mean your ship is named after Emme Ya Ambala?”
“Oui, she is the same girl. Only her name is longer now, monsieur, by one name. Mine.”
“Emme is your wife?”
“Oui.” He paused, then went on. “I see we both have this secret from the other, though this thing does not surprise me. Emme is the one who taught me of your existence. She told me you have great abilities, monsieur. Because of Emme, when Mowsel approached me three years ago, I surprised him by recognizing him as, well, what he was…what you are. Now, I do this work when he needs me and Emme protests my absence.”
“Where is she?”
“Paris. We live in Paris, also Marseille and Corsica. My work makes it necessary to live many places. Emme wants me in Paris to live all the time, but this is still difficult for me. Do you understand this problem, monsieur?”
“Oui,” I said. “I think it might be universal, Captain.”
“I was waiting for the certain moment to tell you of my petit secret, monsieur. I hope I have not become untrustworthy. I never intended a deception.”
“No, Captain, I do not feel deceived. I feel enlightened. I am more than happy to discover that Emme is alive and well. And please, call me Z. Now tell me, how long have you known her, and where and how did you meet?”
“This answer is complicated…Z.”
“Believe me, Captain, I am familiar with complications.”
Glancing up at the sails every so often, Captain B began to tell me a brief history of his life. Born out of wedlock on the island of Martinique to a French sea captain and his mistress, a woman named Isabelle, he was raised in various ports until being removed from his mother’s care by his father because she had become addicted to absinthe. After that, he never saw her again. He was schooled in naval academies in France, then posted in Dakar and Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he met a young black student named Emme Ya Ambala.
They had a relationship for over a year, even discussing marriage, then for a reason Captain B did not explain, had a falling out and she left him on Christmas Day. That was the very same day she delivered the premature baby and rescued me. Many years later, in the middle of the Sahara, Emme said she had reconsidered her decision about leaving a man she only referred to as A.B. Suddenly, I remembered Pic’s whisper to Captain B. “Antoine,” he had called him. Captain B’s name was Antoine Boutrain. Then the full meaning of my dream came to me. The coincidence was astounding. Captain B was the son of Captain Antoine Boutrain, the man in my dream, the man who had lost a small fortune to Solomon and given him the contacts Solomon needed to start his own fortune. His mother was the same woman Captain Woodget had loved and watched over for years.
I let Captain B finish talking and said nothing for several moments. The Emme sliced through the dark water smooth as a blade and a faint glow began to appear over the horizon to the east. In a few more hours we would part ways with Captain B and his crew, but it would not be the last time we would see each other or share a secret.
“I knew your mother,” I said.
“No! Is this possible?”
“Yes. I didn’t know her well, but she was a good person, Captain. There was a night when she gave me hot tea, warm blankets, and shelter during the middle of a hurricane. That was in Louisiana. An old friend of mine loved her well there. He took care of her and gave her a fine funeral when she died.”
Captain B glanced up to check the wind in the sails, then scanned the horizon slowly. Minutes later, he said, “Merci, monsieur. Thank you, Z. I have always wondered this.”
Sailor, Ray, and I left Captain B and the Emme behind in the harbor of the old port of Alexandria, the city founded and built by the Greeks and the capital city of Cleopatra. Once a jewel of the Mediterranean, it was no longer. Alexandria needed both restoration and modernization. People and traffic kept it busy and crowded, but to me it seemed slightly abandoned and neglected.
We were using visas Sailor had obtained while in Malta, making the three of us cousins and all Egyptian nationals whose parents lived on Maltese soil. Sailor spoke Arabic fluently and we passed into the country within minutes, legally, in a manner of speaking. We picked up some local clothing and light caftans, then walked to the train station and took the first available connection to Cairo. After a short time on board amid the heat and dust and sweat, we looked and felt as Egyptian as any other children in Egypt. By sunset, we were in the lobby of a small hotel Sailor knew well. The air was stifling. We were sipping tea and waiting for a man named Rais Hussein, who supposedly had information concerning the Octopus. He was late. We ordered mulukhis and kofta and sipped more tea. He never appeared. It had been a long day, but it was only the first of a thousand to come just like it, each seeming to end in some form of frustration or empty promise.
In Cairo, despite the heat, Sailor and Ray felt more in their element than any place we had been. Sailor because he had traveled through the city on many occasions over the centuries, staying once for a full year as a visitor in the court of Shagaretel-Dorr (Tree of Pearls), the Mameluke former slave and wife of Al-Saleh, the last Ayyubid Sultan. And Ray because he liked the way it was now—a den of thieves and a city where anything was for sale. All you had to know was who to ask.
We spent three sweltering weeks in Cairo. The “City of a Thousand Minarets” truly did appear to have a thousand of them. We combed the narrow streets and alleys, bazaars and markets, searching for any trace of Rais Hussein. There were tens of thousands of shops, from rugs, brass, and tambourines to teashops and smoke rooms. Finally, we were given a tip, more of a rumor, that Rais and his brother Gad Hussein had moved to Luxor in order to work under Rais Ahmed Gurger. He was the foreman for the British archaeologist, Howard Carter, who was resuming his dig in the Valley of the Kings. Carter was looking for intact tombs dating back to the Amarna period and the Eighteenth Dynasty. This, I learned, was the exact reason Giles Xuereb told Sailor to contact Rais Hussein. The Octopus could be in one of these tombs.
The assumption had been made by Giles based on an ancient legend only recently found on an inscription and translated, but not yet published, by Sir Alan Gardiner, a close friend of both Giles and Howard Carter. According to the legend, Nefertiti, the beautiful wife of Akhenaton, had once been presented with a special gift from a foreigner. Nefertiti received no other gift she treasured more. The gift was known as the Octopus. The legend says the foreigner came from Crete, but the origin of the Octopus was thought to be “near the source of the Great River, beyond the Great Convulsions.” When Akhenaton died, Nefertiti lost favor with the priests in Karnak, who wanted the rebellious Pharaoh erased in every aspect. The legend mentions two possible fates for Nefertiti. In one, she escapes with the Octopus and disappears into unknown lands to the south, beyond the cataracts of the Nile, never to be seen again. In the other, she secretly returns at the death of her son, the boy king, Tutankhamen, in order to place the Octopus in his tomb. Giles preferred the second version, saying Sir Alan Gardiner had concurred, then informed him that Carter was going back to the Valley of the Kings in search of tombs. Giles reminded Sailor that the tomb of King Tutankhamen had never been found. He convinced Sailor to find Rais. The inscription was legitimate and Howard Carter was a good archaeologist. Even if Carter was not looking for the Octopus, he could lead us to it. Rais and his brother Gad would be working directly on the site. Sailor wanted any news of all discoveries on the site to come from an inside man. Rais Hussein was his man.